Show how different ideological approaches have helped you to understand the cultural significance of spaces and places.
[40 Marks]
Places and spaces can communicate a fixed view on the world, positioning audiences to hold the preferred, closed reading that alternative theoretical approaches transmit to their audiences. Ideologies are dominant theories that can be implicit or explicit within places and spaces. Therefore, places and spaces are cultural transmitters, playing a role in en-culturing an audience through dominant encoded ideologies. Places and spaces include a variety of texts, from parks to swimming pools, homes to prisons all encoding messages through their parademic choices and have the potential to be interpreted differently in relation to contrasting theoretical perspective being used. The meaning of each building, place and space is affected by the context in which they were built. Buildings communicate messages about the culture they emerge from. They have narratives encoded within them that tell stories of power, patriarchy, class and economics, creating either a democratic or repressive message to the audience.
One genre of places and spaces is shopping centres, or Malls as the high and prestigious places are called. The Trafford Centre juxtaposed by the motorway and ironic in its position in Dumplington, is an exemplary post-modern construction. With 5.3 million users available to access to the Trafford Centre within a radius of 45 minutes, the 2 million square foot owned by CSE is a place to make the consumer ‘happy’ through offering over 230 stores and 60 food outlets to accommodate their cultural practices. The democratic building situated in Dumplinton has gentrified the once waste ground, completing the ‘Golden Triangle’ linking 3 post-modern and functional buildings. Encoded within the Trafford Centre is signs and signifiers which create